Sometime in the next four months, the Highway Trust Fund — which pays for infrastructure projects across the nation — will run dry. And this slow-moving Congress, in the throes of a heated election year, has to figure out a way to fill the coffers or risk halting construction projects across the country.

Text Size

-

+

reset

The Department of Transportation estimates the fund’s highway account will be broke by the end of August, but that could change without warning. There aren’t many good options for lawmakers — particularly Republicans, who are loath to approve big-money projects, don’t much like shifting money around and are sure to resist even a minimal hike in the gas tax.

Few things rile up voters more than political stumbles leaving them stuck in traffic. Just ask New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. And the timing couldn’t be worse, with funding slated to run out just months before voters head to the ballot box to vote in a critical election — providing the electorate with a fresh example of congressional dysfunction.

“It’s a crisis, it is,” said Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “The Highway Trust Fund goes insolvent in July or sometime around there, and so we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to fund it.”

Highway policy is pricey, complicated and fraught with regional tensions, and the process of rebuilding the trust fund could rattle the power hierarchies within the Capitol. It has bedeviled Speaker John Boehner before. Just two short years ago, the Ohio Republican proposed tying road projects to tax revenue from oil drilling. The idea failed to get momentum and blew up in his face.

This time, the situation is far more dire. Not only is the government’s authority to keep spending on transportation projects set to expire on Sept. 30 but the funding is running dry.

Multiple committees have jurisdiction, and even the most senior lawmakers charged with spearheading transportation policy say the decision-making process is parked in the posh leadership suites in the Capitol.

Senior House GOP leadership aides readily admit that this is one of the main hurdles standing between them and the 2014 elections. The looming debate illustrates that, regardless of their plan to keep this year drama free, Republicans will not be able to avoid some legislative battles that threaten to expose deep fissures in their party.

There are a few options, but none are easy and they all come with a price tag likely to reach into the billions.

One possibility is that Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) could decide to rewrite the highway bill — and its funding mechanisms. It’s a long shot — if not impossible — during this overtly political year.

They can also simply transfer money from the government’s general fund to keep the highway trust fund operational. But Boehner virtually ruled that out, and fiscal conservatives don’t want to approve another “bailout” after tens of billions of dollars have been transferred to road and bridge projects in recent years.